>Does it matter if there are X number of parties if you still end up with multitudes of DINOs and RINOs, etc?
In Europe, over the last decades our equivalents to the Democrats (mostly, Social Democrat parties) and Republicans (Christian Democrat/centrist parties) shrank in percentages and the political field widened. These days, you have in most countries everything on the spectrum: communist/tankies, democratic socialists, social democrats, christian democrat/centrists, free-market liberals, center-right, nationalist/far-right and (in some countries) outright fascist/neo-Nazi parties for the "mainstream" political orientation plus a host of special-issue parties - most notably Greens which have become mainstream in itself, national ethnic minority/indigenous representation parties, Pirate Parties, pan-european liberals, local voter associations/"Freie Wähler".
And all of these are to some degree viable, with voters flocking to whomever they want to support. Of course, coalition forming can be tedious (cough Netherlands, Israel), but it is actual representative democracy at work!
In Europe, over the last decades our equivalents to the Democrats (mostly, Social Democrat parties) and Republicans (Christian Democrat/centrist parties) shrank in percentages and the political field widened. These days, you have in most countries everything on the spectrum: communist/tankies, democratic socialists, social democrats, christian democrat/centrists, free-market liberals, center-right, nationalist/far-right and (in some countries) outright fascist/neo-Nazi parties for the "mainstream" political orientation plus a host of special-issue parties - most notably Greens which have become mainstream in itself, national ethnic minority/indigenous representation parties, Pirate Parties, pan-european liberals, local voter associations/"Freie Wähler".
And all of these are to some degree viable, with voters flocking to whomever they want to support. Of course, coalition forming can be tedious (cough Netherlands, Israel), but it is actual representative democracy at work!